Reflection from Friar Nicholas

TUESDAY, TWENTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 2:10-16; Ps 145:8-14; Lk 4:31-37 Coming of the Holy One of God Our responsorial psalm says that the Lord is just in all his ways. The justice of God is enshrined in his holiness, which we have understood as God’s consecration to himself. God cannot be other than himself, and everything he does is rooted in right reason and truth. He is the source of holiness, for he maintains everything in its respective nature and orderliness. The creatures sing the praises of God through their operations, which showcase their different natures and the orderliness of the universe. The order and proportionality in the universe witness to the wisdom with which God made all things. “All your creatures shall thank you, O Lord, and your friends shall repeat their blessing. They shall speak of the glory of your reign and declare your might, O God, to make known to men your mighty deeds and the glorious splendour of your reign.” The friends of God repe...

MONDAY, TWENTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 2:1-5; Ps 119:97-102; Lk 4:16-30 The Anointing from God We are already familiar with the fact that God has invited each of us to eternal communion with him in heaven. We will keep repeating it to spur ourselves on the journey. We have also noted that communion has already begun here when we made a profession of faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind. The sacrament of our communion with God is the Church, into which we have entered by our baptismal profession of faith in Christ. The guarantee and reality of the same communion within each of us and in the Church is the Holy Spirit, who prepares us, individually and collectively as the Church of God, for the fulfilment of the promised communion in heaven. The major work of the Holy Spirit is what he does within each of us; using every means possible, he transforms our minds and hearts into those of Jesus Christ. By doing this, he brings our spirits to the maturity of ...

SUNDAY, TWENTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Jer 20:7-9; Ps 63:2-6,8-9; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16:21-27 Our Natural Attraction to God The reason discovering or knowing the will of God and doing it is so difficult for us is the presence of sin in us. Sin exists as a disorientation within each of us, a desire that is different and impedes what ought to be our natural desire for God that God planted in every nature as coming from him. This disorientation, or desire to go against the natural, becomes a second nature within us as we follow its pull in our daily activities. The presence of this disorientation constitutes receptivity in us for suggestions or instigations of the devil. The presence of this tendency witnesses to the fact of original sin and its effect on us. But the fact that God made us in his image means that the original and natural orientation to God and to all that is natural lies within each of us. The disorientation of sin cannot destroy the original structure and orientati...

THE BEHEADING OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 Cor 1:26-31; Ps 33:12-13,18-21; Mk 6:17-29 The Essence of the Heavenly Tradition The heart or core value that defines the heavenly tradition is God-centredness. The Gospel tradition teaches the supremacy of the knowledge of God the Father and love for Him. We are trained in the holy tradition to prefer the will of the Father in all things and reject our own sinful will. The training commences from the very day we encounter Jesus Christ personally and make our profession of faith in him. To make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ is to have received divine light from the Father as Peter did when he confessed the identity of the Son of Man. Hence, such enlightenment from the Father is a privileged invitation to follow Jesus Christ, the sole teacher of mankind. We sin any time we leave the light of our faith in Jesus Christ to follow our own or worldly light; to desire to do our own will and not follow the teaching of Jesus Christ is to g...

SAINT AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, DOCTOR 1 Jn 4:7-16; Ps 119:9-14; Mt 23:8-12 You have Only One Teacher We celebrate Saint Augustine of Hippo, whose life holds so many lessons for us. In his life, we see what is required to learn and live out the heavenly tradition. He was not born a saint, but a sinner like any of us. Conceived and born in sin, he was drawn to a sinful lifestyle like ours, and he let his soul drink in vanity, becoming vain in his thoughts and life. It is always true that we become what we desire and love; for desire is love in flight to its object. By desire we conceive a thing and become one with it in loving it. Therefore, we are gradually transformed into the likeness of what we desire and love. Such is the operation of God’s image in each of us. God is in all things by his infinite and creative power, but man is all things by knowledge and love. The power to know and to love comes from God, for we understand the human intellect and will as spiritual powers. They are ...

SAINT MONICA 1 Cor 1:1-9; Ps 145:2-7; Mt 24:42-51 The Riches of Heavenly Tradition The true tradition of the Church of Jesus Christ is the Gospel tradition. It is a heavenly tradition because its source is God. We do not just imbibe the heavenly tradition by baptism at the profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Our baptism is rather the beginning of our inculturation into the heavenly culture and tradition. The commencement of this inculturation is not merely the ritual of baptism, but the truthful confession of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as we heard him say to Peter at his confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church,’ our inculturation into the Gospel tradition begins with our genuine confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The features that make our confession genuine are the acknowledgment of our sins and our nothingness without God, sincere sorrow, repentance, confession of our sins to him, and a true re...

WEDNESDAY, TWENTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Thess 3:6-10,16-18; Ps 128:1-2,4-5; Mt 23:27-32 The Earthly and Heavenly Traditions What are traditions? Traditions are informally understood as the various ways of doing things and living day-to-day that we have received from our ancestors. Traditions are constituted from peoples’ customs, values, worldviews, and belief systems. They form part of a people's cultural heritage. Within every tradition we encounter the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is part of the tradition that is genuinely human and general, in the sense that it is found in every human tradition. The bad is part of the tradition that accrued from the experiences of the people which were wrongly understood and resolved; the responses to such misunderstood experiences are codified and passed to subsequent generations. The ugly aspect of traditions is made up of aberrations of our nature which are evil and results of sin and sinful attachments to demons. The ugly a...

TUESDAY, TWENTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Thess 2:1-3,14-17; Ps 96:10-13; Mt 23:23-26 The Coming of the Bridegroom Just as we do not know God the Father because of the blindness caused by sin and due to our engrossment in the sensual things, we do not know the Son also because of our lack of faith in God’s word. The knowledge of the Father and the Son is intertwined; We know the Father when we know the Son, and we know the Son when we know the Father. But Jesus taught that nobody knows the Son except the Father, and nobody knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. The Father has chosen to reveal the Son to us, to invite us to his wedding feast and communion. The revelation is in spiritual form but given in sensible sacramental forms. We have received the gift of faith corresponding to the revelation of God’s Son to us. So, we noted in yesterday’s reflection that the gradual revelation of God’s glory is experienced within each of us who ...

FEAST OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW, APOSTLE Apo 21:9-14; Ps 145:10-13a,17-18; Jn 1:45-51 The Making of the Bride of Christ Those whom the Father has invited to the wedding banquet had no idea what awaited them at the Son of God's wedding banquet. They have no idea of what the Father has prepared for them because they lack the knowledge of the Father. It is only the Son who knows the Father and understands the nature of the banquet he prepared for his wedding. At a wedding banquet, all attention is on the bride and her groom, and so much is lavished on the bride's preparation and decoration to match and display the groom's wealth and affluence. More is expected when the groom is a prince; the king would spend lavishly on the bride. The causes of our ignorance, who are invited to the heavenly banquet, are two: the first is our total ignorance of God; the second is our blindness caused by sin and addiction to the senses. Thus, the Scripture says that what God has prepared for th...

SUNDAY, TWENTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Isa 22:19-23; Ps 138:1-3,6,8; Rom 11:33-36; Mt 16:13-20 Our United Desire for the Communion The Church’s opening prayer for today’s Eucharistic celebration is a plea to God to grant us the desire for communion with him, which he has promised us. This is important because the desire for the life of God enables us to obey his commandments; as we noted previously in our reflections, knowledge and obedience to the Commandments of God introduce us to communion with God. Knowledge of the Commandments and our obedience to them conform our lives here on earth to the divine life. The Commandments are God’s self-revelation to us, his creatures. They constitute an invitation and open door for everyone to enter the communion of the Triune God. So, the revelation of the Commandments to Israel placed them on a pedestal higher than all the Gentile nations. Saint Paul lamented this privilege Israel received from God, but wasted, in the readings of two S...

OUR LADY, MOTHER AND QUEEN Ezek 43:1-7; Ps 85:9-14; Mt 23:1-12 The Seat of Divine Communion To understand the revealed name of God, I Am, is to understand the infinite power of God. It is to understand that God’s plan can never be thwarted by any creature, for every creature owes its existence to our God. The divine will is the cause of every existence. So, the revelation of God’s plan means it must come to pass. Where the realisation of the divine plan is delayed, it is delayed by its human component, for the divine component is already in existence and operative from the moment of its revelation to us. When the human component is found willing and ready by abundance of divine grace, the plan of God is speedily realised, for there is nothing else to impede it. Abraham’s willingness and faith in God’s promise formed the pedestal on which the whole of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, were established according to God’s plan of salvation for all men. When his descendant...

SAINT PIUS X, POPE Ezek 37:1-14; Ps 107:2-9; Mt 22:34-40 The Knowledge of Divine Love Our life here on earth is a journey to communion with God. As we pointed out in our reflection yesterday, understanding the goal of life illuminates our origin and true identity. God has made sufficient provision for our wayfaring through life to divine communion. Each of us can be compared to a child whose parents left under the care of a guardian and travelled of necessity. They made every provision for the child's upbringing, but placed all in the care of the guardian, who is to raise the child with all the provisions, so that he would gradually grow and come into his inheritance with them. The understanding of the provisions, the care the parents put in place for his welfare and upbringing, and the wealth he is to inherit in due time give the child an idea of his parents' love and goodwill. But if the child pays no attention to these things, thinks only of himself, complains that his...

SAINT BERNARD, ABBOT, DOCTOR Ezek 36:23-28; Ps 51:12-15,18-19; Mt 22:1-14 Attendance at the Divine Wedding Human life on earth is a struggle we must engage in; it is a journey we must make; it is a battle we must fight; it is also a death we must die. Our life is all these and even more. But what makes our mortal life worth living is the end for which we live it. The true end of human life is linked to its origin. If we understand the purpose of life on earth, then we must have grasped our origin. Similarly, understanding the origin of our lives is to receive illumination into the purpose of our existence. Because of the importance of knowledge of these two, God revealed his word to us. God had to do this because the knowledge of these principles or pillars of our existence, which are supposed to come to us naturally from creation, became recondite or hidden due to the darkness and distortion caused by sin. The word of God, which is meant to illuminate our understanding, was neve...

WEDNESDAY, TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Ezek 34:1-11; Ps 23; Mt 20:1-16 Shepherds of God’s Flock We falter many times, mainly because we have failed to understand our relationship with God. We belong to God, and everything we have comes from him. If we all belong to God and he cares for everyone as his own, then we must also care for ourselves and for each other. From these relations, we have come to understand our natural need for communion with God and with each other. The wisdom that comes from awareness of God and our relationship with him enlightens our minds to understand that we come from God and are returning to him. The desire for unlimited life is the natural witness to our going back to God. Our ability to know or acquire knowledge of the universe is a testimony that we come from God, for intelligence, which is the operation of rational light within us, points to the presence of the divine image in us. Hence, by creating us, God continues to work in us through knowl...